Castle of Black Iron

Only after four hours, the sky above Zhang Tie brimmed with dozens of vultures. The scavengers of prairie were hovering in the sky and crying happily in terrifying voices, their eyes fixed on the yummy food on the ground. Some brave ones had even already landed on the ground, gawking with their gleaming eyes at the wolf corpses all over the grass. At the same time, they swaggered their fat bodies and stealthily fluttered their wings while gradually jumping towards the corpses.

By now, the one hundred square meters over the hill where Zhang Tie was standing were covered with dead wolves. There were roughly 70 corpses sparsely lying on the ground.

Compared to the past few days, Zhang Tie had achieved most today. But if more than 70 wild wolves had rushed towards him altogether, he feared that he would have been forced to escape to the vast prairie. Thankfully, they arrived in batches, which granted Zhang Tie the chance to destroy them one group by another.

This also explained how delicate this trap was. The moment the male wild wolves smelt the odor of female wolves, they would definitely rush towards them immediately. They would never choose teamwork in such a situation.

'Probably even male wild wolves would not accost female wolves or make piston-like movements together,' Zhang Tie decided.

Looking at it that way, wild wolves were actually akin to human beings. Since humans, even if they wanted to spend money to f*ck girls, they would never go there in groups. Take Zhang Tie himself for an instance, besides the guys of Hit-Plane Brotherhood, he would hardly go to such a place with anybody else.

He kept waiting, expecting more wild wolves...

The last wave was composed of roughly 20 wild wolves. At the beginning, Zhang Tie only used his hands to kill them. In the end, seeing that some of them were about to escape, he had to use his lance.

Currently, his lance’s attacking range had reached as far as 80 steps with his increasingly growing physical strength and spiritual energy. In this range, Zhang Tie was confident to hit a fly with his lance.

This was a horrifying and strange talent. And Zhang Tie still didn’t know how he could master such a terrifying skill so abruptly. He had no idea where that weird funnel-shaped locking state between him and the target would come from whenever he wanted to throw out his lance.

Having common sense, of course Zhang Tie knew that it was not a common thing. At least, in his surroundings or at school, although having heard a lot of weird things, he had never heard that anyone could suddenly get such an ability. But for him now it was less of a skill to pierce through his target and more of something as instinctive as taking a breath or walking. It was as if he had been born with the ability.

‘Donder knows a lot, perhaps he'll know something about this.’

Zhang Tie decided to ask Donder after the survival training. Although that guy was a bit narrow-minded, he was the still the most reliable person Zhang Tie knew besides his parents and elder brother.

Female wolves’ urine spread through the air, mixing with the increasingly stimulative odor of wild wolves’ fresh blood. Smelling this, more and more vultures hovered above, many of which landed, uttering ‘Gu wo...’. They were carefully observing the dead wild wolves lying on the ground, checking whether they were completely dead or not.

In the past days, these guys had already enjoyed food several times. If they were requested to rate who was the most welcome person on the prairie, Zhang Tie felt that he was definitely qualified to be the No. 1.

While vultures were observing the dead wolves, Zhang Tie was observing them. These days he had found that these guys weren't actually not that disgusting. Although they had a bad reputation, they were the real peace-keepers as they only ate rotten meat and rarely killed other live beings.

Additionally, before eating, they would confirm that the target was really dead. If it was still alive or had one last breath in them, they would then stay aside and wait patiently. They only carefully observed their target, never attacking the almost dead animals.

"Hey, buddy, don’t be afraid, we are good people. We will not attack you while you're still alive. We're waiting to eat your dead body. I think you'll agree to that, right? If not, you'll definitely chase us away. And since you didn’t, it means that you've agreed."

This was how these guys greeted the other animals on the prairie.

Because of these vultures, Zhang Tie reconfirmed his previous belief that a person’s reputation and what was said about him rarely represented the kind of person he really was. Someone with good reputation was not definitely a good person; conversely, a person with a poor reputation was not definitely a bad person.

Although vultures had a bad reputation, none of them had ever hurt other animals in their whole lives. They hadn't even ever hurt a stalk of grass. Even though they were ferocious beasts, they actually chose the loneliest and most misunderstood way of living, and also the most kind.

In contrast, the wild wolves would always attack human beings. Each year, there would be students attending the survival training and people living outside the city getting killed by these wild wolves. However, vultures never attacked people. Although they looked ugly with pitch-dark feathers all over and curved yet long necks which would even drop feathers, Zhang Tie truly liked these guys who never hurt others.

Landing on the ground, the vultures kept uttering ‘Gu wo...’, seemingly warning the lying wild wolves about their arrival. After doing that for awhile, they noticed that the wild wolves didn’t make any response. Finally, a brave vulture just moved forward and tried to give one wolf a peck as the last warning and confirmation.

After that, it fluttered its wings and jumped off. However, the wild wolf remained still. Then another vulture moved forward to give the same wolf a peck and jumped off as the first one had. The wild wolf still didn’t move. With this, the vultures finally confirmed that the wild wolves were dead and had already agreed to being eaten by them.

Therefore, the two vultures fluttered their wings and uttered ‘Gu wo...’ to announce it to the others. Hearing their signal, all the other vultures charged at the dead wild wolf and started to enjoy the yummy food.

When the vultures started to enjoy their meal, Zhang Tie had already prepared to leave. By then, he had also finally confirmed that no more wild wolves would be attracted here today.

Today’s achievements made Zhang Tie very satisfied. He knew that the latest Wild Wolf Seven-Strength Fruit on the small tree would be ripe by now and would be waiting for him to enjoy it tonight. Tomorrow, Zhang Tie would have five wild wolves’ strength in his body and would have improved his fighting force greatly.

A lance's handle was covered with wolf blood. The polished handle had become dark after several weeks’ fighting, the color coming from the wood soaking up blood.

Zhang Tie put all of his lances back into their container and went to a nearby pond. He wanted to clean them. Since because of all that blood, if it wasn't cleaned, he would always smell gory. Although not being obsessively tidy, Zhang Tie still preferred to be clean.

The lances felt fitting before, but recently they've come to feel as light as straw sticks. It made them harder and harder to use. Zhang Tie shook his head. It seemed that he would have to go back to the Wild Wolf Castle tomorrow and ask Peter and his colleagues to build a new set of heavier lances. These ones were starting to feel just too light.

He reached a small pond. When he arrived there and squatted down with lances in hand, Zhang Tie became stunned as the water in the pond was rippling in a certain rhythm.

‘Is this an earthquake?’ Zhang Tie became slightly puzzled.

Additionally, the ripples in the pond seemed to be coming into being faster and faster, while small water drops directly jumped out of the pond. At this moment, Zhang Tie thought he heard thunder from afar. His face immediately turned pale, and he threw down his lances, rushing towards the tree on the hill.

The several female wolves tied to the tree became really scared when they saw Zhang Tie running towards them.

Zhang Tie climbed onto the crown of the tree at his fastest speed and started to look northwest of the prairie. Far off, there seemed to be thousands of rolling thunders rocking the earth.

Several minutes later, the sounds gradually became louder, and the whole earth started to heavily rock like a big drum. At the same time, numerous birds were scared off and took flight, covering half of the sky, and moving away from the black cloud in the northwest. Even the vultures in front of Zhang Tie seemed to have sensed danger and rose into the air one by one!

Several minutes later, that sound of thousands of rolling thunders grew louder. From the northwest of the prairie, packs of animals—including wild wolves, huge wolves, antelopes, rhinos, magical leopards, hares, lions, jackals, and wild ox—started to rush away in all directions to get as far away from the booming noise.

Several golden wolves and huge wolves and even a lion were escaping, passing by the tree in a panic. However, Zhang Tie had no mood to hunt them at this moment. He just fixed his eyes on the northwest of the prairie.

Soon after these animals disappeared in the distance, several pioneers on horses came in their tracks. Although some of these pioneers were very powerful, they looked like hares in a panic. With their bodies low, close to the horses’ backs, they rode without daring to raise their heads...

"Hurry up, escape, the Iron-Horn Army of the Norman Empire is coming..." a pioneer screamed in a panic, his voice shrill, as he passed 50 m of Zhang Tie...